


la décadanse

by postcardmystery



Category: Curse Workers Series - Holly Black
Genre: Gen, Murder, Self-Harm, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’ve done this tons of times, kid,” says Barron, slippery and concise, and Cassel nods, his eyes like the calm before the storm, and turns a mobster’s heart to ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	la décadanse

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for violence, murder, and (canonical, non-mental health related) self-harm.

Barron doesn’t remember the first time he ever worked someone.

Irony.

Don’t even get him started.

 

 

Barron doesn’t remember the first time he ever worked someone, but his Mom does. (Sort of.)

“You gave me the gloves without holes in them!” she’d yelled, and he’d pushed his hand into her wrist, trying to stave off the inevitable. Her eyes had gone blank and dark, and he’d stepped back, shook his head, and run off without looking back.

Ten minutes later, Shandra Sharpe looked down at the red gloves she’d abandoned, in a fit of rage, on the kitchen countertop, and knew that now she had a memory worker to play with.

Death, emotion, physicality, memory. God, she hoped little Cassel came up with goods this stellar.

Oh, yeah, we’ve been over this one. Irony. It’s a bitch.

 

 

Philip was always the loyal one. Philip was loyal at seven, at ten, at thirteen, at sixteen, at every age and to every name and in every possible way.

At fourteen, Barron watches Philip tear apart the scarring at his throat in order to pack it anew. Philip is seventeen years old, now, and he’s not a man in the eyes of the law, but they’re criminals born and made, and the law is not something too many shits are given about.

“Does it hurt,” says Barron, mocking, not making it a question, and Philip flicks his bare finger against Barron’s cheekbone.

“You tell me,” says Philip, his smile poison, standing over where Barron writhes on the floor, and Barron never asks again.

 

 

Philip’s the loyal one, but then so is Cassel. Other men would have spent years worrying that they were missing something, some crucial piece to make them whole. Other men aren’t Barron Sharpe— but that? Is rather the point of this story.

“You’ve done this tons of times, kid,” says Barron, slippery and concise, and Cassel nods, his eyes like the calm before the storm, and turns a mobster’s heart to ice.

 

 

Barron’s a worker, but before they started working his little brother, he didn’t use it much. So he didn’t inherit the loyalty shit, big whoop, but the con is just as much a drug to him as it is to every other shitbag out there who shares his last name.

He steals fast cars because he wants to drive them for an hour or two. He walks out of restaurants without paying the bill, and never once lets himself panic, lets himself run. He’ll fuck you and steal your wallet and your watch and the ring your momma gave you, and he’ll get more of a rush from the theft than the sex.

He’s a Sharpe, and that, you see, describes all his angles perfectly.

 

 

“When are you going to get yours?” asks Philip, ten, twenty, a hundred times, fingers playing lightly over his scarred flesh, and Barron grins, cons a conman, lies, “Soon,” every damn time.

 

 

Barron taps his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for Cassel, for pizza night. So he figured it out. So he needs to set his trap. It’s just a matter of time. These things always are.

“Hi, man,” says Cassel, opening the door, and Barron slides off his shades, grins, and, hey, guess what, little brother, but— irony?

It’s a  _killer_.


End file.
